October 2006 Archives

The International Herald Tribune is running an excellent article by Evgeny Morosov about the Kremlin encroachment on freedom of expression in the blogosphere.

Some choice excerpts:

Plenty of speculation about the Kremlin's vicious plan to control and censor the blogosphere flooded the Internet. In a country that still mourns over the recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of its most critical voices, many think that a crackdown on bloggers is long overdue.

What's so pernicious about the deal is that it replicates the very Kremlin model that poisoned the rest of the Russian media.

All ingredients are in order. The oligarch (Aleksandr Mamut, one of the few oligarchs who made a smooth transition between the regimes, owns Sup); the upcoming 2007 and 2008 elections; the independent media asset with tremendous popularity; and the controversial figure in charge (Sup's chief blogging officer is Anton Nossik, the father of the Russian Internet and, among other things, a former associate of Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin's spindoctor).

Sup already announced the creation of an "abuse team." Typically, abuse teams monitor, warn and suspend blogs that post inappropriate content; prior to the deal, this function was performed by LiveJournal's American abuse team.

Given Sup's roots and potential ideology, one can hardly expect that the scope of discussions allowed on the Russian Internet will increase.
...
But thousands of more mainstream bloggers, who have filled in the void left by the disappearance of independent media, will become divided, some of them falling for the Sup offer, some of them migrating to other services, and some of them stopping to blog altogether (a trend that has started after Sup's announcement). Thus, with the direct or indirect assistance from Sup, the Kremlin will manage to burden and, perhaps, even reverse the process that has made opinion-sharing in Russia so easy.

The Dutch television station RTL Z has posted their interview with me online here.

It is the ninth item down the list, titled "Interview Roland Koopman met advocaat Robert Amsterdam over Rusland."

This week some European Parliament members are awakening to an uncomfortable reality: that they have sold their long-term values for short-term energy deals with Russia.

These European values – as basic as respect for human rights, property rights, freedom of press, and international law – have all recently been violated by the behavior of Russian officials both in regards to the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Andrei Kozlov, as well as the continued energy gangsterism at Sakhalin.

Case in point, as Putin prepares for his meeting with the European Parliament in Lahti, Finland tomorrow, the Liberal Group has already published paid advertisements of an open letter carrying the following messages:

We are deeply concerned that political opposition is being slowly but surely eliminated and that those who dare to finance it, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are being silenced and incarcerated.

We therefore challenge you to reverse those policies which are strangling your country and its private citizens, conduct an open and independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Anna Politkovskaya and others and bring the perpetrators of this and other murders to justice.

This newfound willingness to defend European values, stand up against the injustice suffered by Khodorkovsky, and make a positive gesture in memory of Politkovskaya is admirable and a step in the right direction. We can only hope that more people in Europe realize that human rights and rule of law are not mutually exclusive from energy partnership with Russia.

Even weeks after the Politkovskaya murder, the reaction of the Russian authorities still provokes much ire among the media. This Week in Review piece in the Times by CJ Chivers is spot on.

Mr. Putin’s public appearances often reveal a president with an alert, disciplined mind. His command of detail can seem Clintonesque. But he is also prone to acidic asides, often painfully timed, that reveal all the humor of a sniper.

His gaffes have become a small canon. In 2000, Larry King asked him about what happened to the Kursk, a submarine that under mysterious circumstances had ended up disabled on the sea bed with its entire crew dead. “It sank,” Mr. Putin said.

Two years later, at a news conference in Brussels, a French reporter asked him a pointed question about Chechnya. Mr. Putin suggested that the reporter might want to become a radical Islamist, and invited him to Moscow for a circumcision, saying he could recommend a procedure so that nothing would grow back.

The remark did nothing to dispel perceptions that sanctioned cruelty had run amok in Chechnya, a world that Ms. Politkovskaya labeled, in a book title, “A Small Corner of Hell.”

For Ms. Politkovskaya, who journeyed repeatedly into that place, the price was her life. From her flower-covered casket, her breath stopped by bullets, she offered once again a peek at the Kremlin’s heart. To those who mourned her, it looked like ice.

Nina Khrushcheva of the New School has an op/ed running today in Haaretz and the Miami Herald which links together the murders of Andrei Kozlov, Enver Ziganshin, and Anna Politkovskaya, and argues that Russia's "dictatorship of law" is nothing more than an outrageous public relations farce.

She writes:

I am not accusing Putin's government of the contract killing of Politkovskaya. ... But even if Vladimir Putin's associates had nothing to do with Politkovskaya being gunned down in an elevator of her apartment building in the center of Moscow, his contempt for law created the climate in which the murder was carried out. Like the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in his Canterbury Cathedral many centuries ago, the crime was committed in the clear belief that it would please the king.

The supposedly civilizing influence of being a Western partner - chairing a G8 summit in Saint Petersburg for example - seems to have been lost on Putin's Kremlin cabal. Once again exposure to Western values has delivered another Potemkin village; Russia presents a facade of laws and democratic institutions, but behind that cardboard surface the same arbitrary brutes rule.

The danger for the world is that Putin's lawlessness is being exported. Across Russia's near abroad, a form of criminalized diplomacy is taking root. Look at Putin's attempt to rig Ukraine's previous presidential election, and the on again off again criminal charges brought against the opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko. Look at the rogue breakaway regions in Moldova and Georgia that exist only because of the Kremlin's backing. Look at how the Kremlin seeks to blackmail its neighbors by threatening their energy supplies.

In the case of Politkovskaya, the Council of Europe must immediately assign a special rapporteur to focus on the methodology used in the investigation. Russia is never going to be able to emerge from the stink of what appears to be a clear contract killing unless a special prosecutor is assigned.

Khrushcheva is right: whoever pulled the trigger, the Kremlin’s new and improved system of impunity is to blame. Having people such as Vladimir Ustinov head justice in Russia demonstrates to the world where rule of law ranks in the priorities of the siloviki.

Vilhelm Konnander has posted a powerful entry on the Politkovskaya murder:

From the postscript to “Putin’s Russia”, by Anna Politkovskaya, murdered Saturday in Moscow:

Yes, stability has come to Russia. It is a monstrous stability under which nobody seeks justice in lawcourts which flaunt their subservience and partisanship. Nobody in his or her right mind seeks protection from the institutions entrusted with maintaining law and order, because they are totally corrupt. Lynch law is the order of the day, both in people’s minds and in their actions. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The President himself has set an example by wrecking our major oil company, Yukos, after having jailed its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin considered Khodorkovsky to have slighted him personally, so he retaliated. He not only retaliated against Khodorkovsky himself but went on to seek the total destruction of the goose that laid golden eggs for the coffers of the Russian State. Khodorkovsky and his partners have offered to surrender their shares in Yukos to the government, begging it not to destroy the company. The government has said, “No. We want our pound of flesh.”

A fascinating situation is developing in Germany regarding EU-Russia relations. According to the International Herald Tribune, Germany's Social Democrats in control of the Foreign Ministry have drafted an internal paper outlining a new energy-focused Ostpolitik (sound familiar, anyone?) that makes no mention - no mention whatsoever - of human rights.

The article says:

The Foreign Ministry's paper, titled "The German EU Presidency: Russia, European Neighborhood Policy and Central Asia," states that "Russia will play a central role in the German EU presidency. Germany wants its chapter of close German-Russian relations to be brought into the wider development of a European-Russian partnership."

Gernot Erler, state secretary at the Foreign Ministry and a Russia expert, said the government hoped to achieve this goal through a new Ostpolitik based on "Annäherung durch Verflechtung" or "growing closer by interweaving." In the ministry's vision, this policy would actively engage Russia and the post-Soviet states to bring them closer to Europe.

"We aim at a comprehensive integrationist and forward-looking approach with clear signals that Russia is welcome in Europe," the paper states. The section on Russia highlights the energy ties between Russia and Europe that were strengthened by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, from 1998 to 2005. Russia, it says, "will remain a key partner for Germany and the EU."

"Engaging" Russia is a necessary strategy and important for the development of a solid partnership - as long as it is done so in a constructive manner, with clear and direct statements on Western standards of human rights, civil society, and democratic practices. However, the engagement that the Social Democrats and Frank-Walter Steinmeier are advocating is nothing more than a euphemism for surrender - an overt signal to the most base elements within the Kremlin that their belligerent authoritarianism will be tolerated, and that Germany is willing to sweep dozens of violations and crimes under the rug in exchange for preferential treatment in energy relations in the short term.

This extraordinarily opportunistic position of the Social Democrats does great collateral damage to innumerable victims. The SPD is turning its back on the victims of war crimes in Chechnya, opposition parties and NGOs under the jackboot of the siloviki, political prisoners like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and anyone who dares to tell the truth or criticize the country's descent into autocracy, such as the courageous reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was brutally assassinated today in front of her home. They are turning their backs on the young democracies of the former Soviet Union, such as Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, and others - and Russia has already demonstrated how it intends to treat these nations. And last of all, they are placing their fellow members of the EU at a significant disadvantage by negotiating bilaterally with Russia rather than as a united Europe. Are we witnessing the end of the Franco-German Axis of influence in the EU?

The Social Democrat's renewed Ostpolitik poses a classic free rider problem to the rest of the EU. By using human rights (or rather the toleration of the lack thereof) as a currency, Germany is the actor that intends to consume more than its fair share of the resource (in this case, preferential energy relations with Russia), while the rest of Europe is forced to shoulder the great burden of the cost (in this case, they shall see themselves paying up with portions of sovereignty to Russian interference in politics and economy).

If Ostpolitik goes through, the EU will be forced to view any Russian human rights violation as a German human rights violation. Every time a political party is outlawed, Germany's signature will be on the paper, every time a dissident is imprisoned without fair trial, Germany's hand is on the key to the jail, and every time an investigative journalist is savagely murdered, the blood is on Germany's hands. This is the only way to awaken a conscience among the Social Democrats.

At the conclusion of the Herald Tribune story, Jorg Himmelreich of the German Marshall Fund sums up the situation quite succinctly:

"The Social Democratic Party has a long tradition of promoting a policy toward Russia that is driven by a deep inclination to understand and to accept quickly Russia's deviation from Western models of democracy, human rights and civil society."

Somewhere Willy Brandt is smiling in his grave.

Today the media is reporting on the brutal slaying of esteemed Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family.

From the Associated Press, published in the Guardian:

Investigative Russian Journalist Killed

Saturday October 7, 2006

By MARIA DANILOVA

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian journalist known for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya was shot to death Saturday in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow, in a killing prosecutors believe could be connected to her investigative work.

Anna Politkovskaya was a tireless reporter who had written a critical book on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.

Prosecutors have opend a murder investigation into her death, said Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for the Moscow prosecutor's Office. Investigators suspect the killing was connected to the work of the 48-year-old journalist, Vyacheslav Raskinsky, Moscow's first deputy prosecutor said on state-run Rossiya television.

Politkovskaya's body was found in an elevator in her Moscow apartment building, a duty officer at a police station in central Moscow told The Associated Press. Rasinsky said a pistol and bullets were found at the site of the crime. The RIA-Novosti news agency, citing police officials, reported that Politkovskaya was shot twice, the second time in the head.

Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said Politkovskaya had frequently received threats. A few months ago, unknown assailants had tried unsuccessfully to break into the car her daughter Vera was driving.

In 2001, Politkovskaya fled to Vienna for several months after receiving e-mail threats alleging that a Russian police officer she had accused of committing atrocities against civilians was intent on revenge. The officer, Sergei Lapin, was detained in 2002 based on her allegations but the case against him was closed the following year.

``Whenever the question arose whether there is honest journalism in Russia, almost every time the first name that came to mind was Politkovskaya,'' Panfilov said.

Politkovskaya began reporting on Chechnya in 1999, during Russia's second campaign there, and concentrated less on military engagements than on the human side of the war. She wrote long, empathic stories about the Chechen inhabitants of refugee camps and Russian soldiers she found in hospitals - until she was banned from visiting those hospitals, Panfilov said.

More than any other Russian reporter, Politkovskaya has chronicled killings, tortures and beatings of civilians by Russian servicemen - reports that put her on a collision course with the authorities.

``There are journalists who have this fate hanging over them,'' Panfilov said. ``I always thought something would happen to Anya, first of all because of Chechnya.''

Politkovskaya fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan in 2004, where many thought she was heading to mediate the crisis. Her colleagues had suggested the incident was an attempt on her life.

She was one of the few people to have entered the Moscow theater where Chechen militants took hundreds of hostages in October 2002 and tried to negotiate with the rebels.

``Anna was a hero to so many of us, and we'll miss her personally, but we'll also miss the information that she and only she was brave enough and dedicated enough to dig out and make public, and that's a loss that I'm not sure can ever be replaced,'' said Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Politkovskaya's death is the highest-profile killing of a journalist in Russia since they July 2004 slaying of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.

Russia has become one of the deadliest places for journalists. Twenty-three journalists were killed in the country between 1996 and 2005, many in Chechnya, according to CPJ. At least 12 have been murdered in contract-style killings since Putin came to power, Simon said.

``None of those have been adequately investigated,'' he said. ``We do know that record creates an environment where those who might seek to carry out this murder would feel that there would be few likely consequences.''

In addition to her daughter, Politkovskaya is survived by a son, Ilya, Panfilov said.

During her career, Polykovskaya received more than 10 awards and prizes, including an award for human rights reporting from the London-based Amnesty International; a freedom of speech award from the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders; and a journalism and democracy award from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Here is a longer profile of Anna from the Guardian.

Interesting article in the Times today about Sakhalin. It's great to see Goldman Sachs coming around to the view that my colleagues and I have been expressing for the past two years.

“The official rhetoric is getting steadily more shrill and does not bode well for the future of foreign oil companies in Russia,” the director of Goldman Sachs’s Moscow office, Rory MacFarquhar, wrote in a note to investors recently. “We continue to believe that the aim of this campaign is to force the foreign companies to accept Russian state companies as equal or even majority partners in their projects, possibly for no compensation.”

Then there is a boilerplate analysis of Gazprom's aims:

Meanwhile, the Russian company Gazprom is negotiating to buy 25 percent of Shell’s project, but those talks have not gone well. Shell announced the cost increase only in July 2005, just a week after signing a preliminary asset swap agreement with Gazprom.

Gazprom, which is seeking a monopoly on natural gas exports from Russia to Asia, wanted a veto on the board, with a voice in decisions about markets, pricing and strategy. Under a previous charter for Shell’s operating company, the 25 percent stake, plus one share, would have given Gazprom a say in these decisions.

And lastly, a terrific quote from Yermakov:

“The environmental weapon, in this sense, allows the Russian authorities to put pressure on the operators and at the same time to defend a noble cause,” said Vitaly V. Yermakov, research director for Russian and Caspian energy at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. “In chess, every good move should be both offensive and defensive. Russians are very good chess players.”

Everywhere you look these days, the Russian state is showing off its false arrogance. From bullying foreign investors in Sakhalin, to interference in the energy trade, to the ever increasing hostilities toward Georgia and other former satellites, to the continued use of the Gulag and exile as in Czarist times, Russia is making a clear statement to the world that it shall do whatever it likes. Blinded by the belief that energy markets move in only one direction, Moscow is currently marketing a popular hubris to its citizens not seen since the tragic leviathan of the Soviet empire.

But toward what end? And guided by what principles and objectives? Some have taken the perspective that the New Russia is at its essence ideology-less - nothing more than an oil-driven authoritarian, corporate state, linked together with disparate partners such as Iran and Venezuela who share no values, only a common affinity for domestic political repression, a managed economy, and distaste for a rule-based international system.

I don't necessarily agree. Russia's renewed rise to power features some rudimentary ideological underpinnings, which, although meaningless, are repeated over and over from the top of the Kremlin on down. Whether talking about relations with the EU or absurd bans on Georgian and Moldovan wines, Moscow is singularly focused on explaining away these actions by selling the idea of "sovereign democracy."

This week United Russia, Putin's rubber-stamp party, unveiled its campaign platform with "sovereign democracy" as its centerpiece. The ideological godfather of the concept is Vladislav Surkov, the No. 2 man in the Kremlin. The arguments behind sovereign democracy are only deceptively complex - in truth it is nothing more than a long conversation that goes nowhere (somewhat like "energy egotism") and concludes that democracy for Russia needs to be adapted to serve Russia's needs - a total bastardization of the very principle, and a euphemism for authoritarianism and repression. As the Financial Times writes: What Mr Surkov calls "sovereign democracy", [is] roughly translatable as "We'll do it our way".

The baffling incoherence of sovereign democracy is based in that fact that while it rejects isolationism, it also refuses to engage in any kind of transnational structure or community of nations. While Russia is happy to trade, own property, and powerfully influence policy outside its own borders, it is deathly afraid of submitting itself to anyone else's rules. Moscow is trying to order globalization a la carte, when in fact it is a prix fix. The result: a paradox of asymmetry that although stable for now, will begin to show serious fissures in the near future.

However in these quasi-religious incantations of the empty ideology, we are seeing the emergence of a new form of ideological symbolism. Surkov's sovereign democracy is the Brezhnev Doctrine revisited - a convenient rationale to ignore international norms and practices in diplomacy, business, and human rights.

The strangest part is that this self-serving ideology is achieving the desired effect in Europe. Germany's reaction to the movement of sovereign democracy in Russia has been to reinstitute a policy of Ostpolitik - seeking a Brandt-like incantation of integration and rapprochement. With open arms toward Russia, Germany has given up any hope of real change or social improvement in Russia, removed human rights from the bargaining table, and sent a clear signal to Moscow that yes, indeed, continue doing whatever you like and we won't complain. It is decidedly weak, dystopic, and shameful for Germany to abandon so many newly independent friends to the whims of their mighty neighbor. Sovereign, perhaps, but democratic? Not even close.

Today the New York Times is running a long feature Cheniere Energy, an admirable Houston-based LNG company that has just cleared some major regulatory hurdles and is rushing to build several regasification terminals on the Gulf - thereby holding a major key to the future of energy security for the United States. One of the two terminals, at Sabine Pass in Texas, will be able to handle 400 tankers a year, making it the largest import hub of natural gas in the country. The bottom line: Cheniere has quietly become the premiere player in LNG in the United States.

What the article does not mention is that there are indications that a Russian state energy firm may be considering acquiring a major participation in the company (perhaps majority), and gain a critical foothold into U.S. energy infrastructure.

Check out some of the following quotes:

News from Russia via the Houston Chronicle:

Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said Tuesday in Houston that, in exchange the Russian company would allow Western energy companies to have a role in developing the Shtokman Field in the Barents Sea.

"Our principle is simple. We want to be involved in all parts of the value chain," Medvedev said in the interview published in Wednesday's editions of the Houston Chronicle. "For access to our strategic reserve base, we want equal access to the downstream and midstream assets."

Upstream also reported on "close talks" between Russia and Cheniere on March 24, 2006 (not available online):

Liquefied natural gas terminal developer Cheniere Energy is looking to Russia for potential deal-making opportunities to reserve capacity at its planned LNG import terminals along the Gulf of Mexico coast, writes Anthony Guegel. ... The talks could lead to a trip to Moscow by Cheniere's co-founder and chief executive Charif Souki. Such a trip is believed to be under consideration by Cheniere. ... John Hattenberger, LNG dirtector for Gazprom Marketing & Trading, has made no secret of his company's ambition to be a world leader in the delivery of LNG.

Part of that global strategy includes staking out a position in North America, and particularly in the US.

Last week, Hattenberger said at an LNG industry forum in San Antonio, Texas, that talks for reserving regasification capacity in the US have hit "fever pitch".

The Kremlin has long desired to diversify their customer base for Russian gas, and get more and more natural gas out of the pipelines and onto LNG tankers to sell on the spot market to the top bidder - thereby giving them more flexibility on long term pipeline contracts. This increased ability to take advantage of price upswings on the spot market will not only cripple the EU's bargaining position, but will also dramatically strengthen the Kremlin's political leverage with the United States, and will provide them with a critical position to encircle North America on many energy import routes.

Isn't it time that lawmakers and consumers heard this knocking at the door? One need not look further than the Ukraine fiasco to see what the Russians would be willing to do the U.S. energy supply should any political or business decision go against their interests. Yes, it is true that importing Russian gas to the gulf will inevitably happen in the future, but the time to play hardball is now, by demanding critical reforms to separate the energy industry from politics, respect rule of law, and improve human rights before the Kremlin is allowed to take over strategic U.S. companies.

From the Washington Post:

Yesterday, pressed by the Bush administration, Georgia allowed the Russian officers to return home. But Russia continued its bellicose acts, while improbably claiming that it -- and not the poor nation of 5 million it is besieging -- is the victim of aggression. In a telephone conversation, Mr. Putin told President Bush that "it was unacceptable for other countries to take steps that Georgia could interpret as support," according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Mr. Bush ought to reject that imperious warning. U.S. diplomats in fact have spent the past several days urging compromise and caution on the part of Georgia's sometimes impulsive president, Mikheil Saakashvili. But the United States has not only the right but also the duty to support Georgia's independence and Mr. Saakashvili's aspirations to consolidate liberal democracy and steer his country toward membership in NATO. As the Georgian president rightly said yesterday, "The message to Russia is: 'Enough is enough.' "

The Accidental Russophile has posted an entry analyzing the role of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in the escalating conflict between Russia and Georgia.

He writes:

The question you should be asking is - why would the west even care about Georgia at all - and why would they like to see this conflict resolved? As with most things these days, it all goes back to oil. This is an issue that Russia Blog did fail to touch upon.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) connects the oil-rich (but land-locked) Caspian Sea region with the Mediterranean, bringing oil to western markets. This is the second longest pipeline in the world and its location was specifically selected through Georgia to avoid possible conflicts with Russia and Iran (which would have been easier construction routes).

Today the Eurasia Daily Monitor reports on the "Gas Gangsterism" of Russia's intereference at Sakhalin II. Ferguson notes that "Some within the Russian government are reportedly concerned that Russia’s image as a place for investment could be dealt a serious blow now that the highest-profile investment projects seem under fire."

Talk about the understatement of the year. With Abe feeling particularly assertive in Japan, and Exxon Mobile showing its willingness to express its displeasure with Russia, it seems we are only waiting for the Dutch to summon up the courage to tell the Kremlin when enough is enough. Is it possible that they have tipped their hand on Sakhalin? I still contend we will see this conflict get resolved with minimal drama in a backdoor, untransparent agreement, but the message has been made clear: Yukos is no longer just a noun for the Kremlin, but also a verb.

Today Jeffrey Mankoff of Harvard University has an opinion piece in the Moscow Times analyzing Sergei Lavrov's speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

Mankoff's article gets a little caught up in a familiar polemic, one shaped by the meta-narrative of Russia-as-victim. He writes:

"Russia's sovereign foreign policy is focused on promoting Russian interests, not challenging the West. The difference is significant, because Russian and U.S interests are not mutually exclusive as they often were during the Cold War."

Of course Russia has a legitimate right to pursue its interests abroad, and this in itself should not be alarming. However, the Kremlin is actively exploiting this angle to force unnecessary concessions and convince the international community to tolerate its frequent violations of international norms and regulations. Pragmaticism and realism are both important for diplomacy, but what we face here is an administration that refuses to engage within a rule-based environment. There is a big difference between reviving Cold War suspicions or hostility and simply getting tough with Russia, namely by asking them for visible improvements in democracy, rule of law, and human rights. Now is not the time to be weak-kneed and apologetic - it's time to turn the Russian relationship into a constructive partnership.